Watching from the Wall
by Kanousei
Summary: Anyone could tell you about Tidus Lys. AU On finding love, fathers, and self. Tidus/Xigbar


**Disclaimer:** I hold no ownership of the Final Fantasy franchise or Kingdom Hearts. And if I stole them, I'd never tell.

The title is a reference to the song "One Line" by the lovely P.J. Harvey, rocking diva. Give it a listen if you can – some fanvids are floating around YouTube, at least, and it's really beautiful. Lyrics at the end.

...

* * *

Anyone could tell you about Tidus Lys.

One would hardly have to dig to be regaled with examples of his athletic prowess. The star blitzball player of All Souls Prep in Destiny Islands had gone on to dominate the college field through the prestigious vehicle of Radiant Garden University. Some of his talent might be natural, they would tell you, with the wordless shrug which had become the universal reference to his father, but there was no mistaking the effort he displayed on the field. The locals of the Destiny Islands and Radiant Garden alike were proud of their little superstar, surely only years away from becoming a professional they could all lay some slight claim on to brighten their days. It strengthened morale, rekindled murmurings in Radiant Garden of the need to string together their own team so they would no longer have to lose such promising players to larger cities (as they had Wakka to Traverse Town mere years before).

Clusters of flushed young fillies would be quick to describe his pale, flashing eyes and chiseled body, that adorable face. Jealous swoons erupted at the mention of his hair, thick and sun-streaked blond in bold contrast to his deep, seemingly permanent tan. Accounts ranged from the "totally cute" of the thin young girls nervously wearing make-up for the first time to the purrs of grad students and sleek older women of "that radiant young Adonis."

His confidence was marveled at by those who knew him well. It was impossible to irk him, to shake his bright grin, and equally impossible not to feel superior on occasion, when his thick skin and head deflected so much, when he tucked an arm behind his head and flushed awkwardly, stumbling over words.

Not too bright, they would tell you, but a wonderful person, so much fun to be with. Always good for a laugh.

Listen, and listen well, for a thing can almost be truth if a person sincerely believes it. One's view of the world can only be derived from what they themselves have experienced or learned, and so to all those who knew Tidus these things were very true.

That they were also very false was a fact known to Tidus alone, and perhaps speculated upon by a rare few discerning souls – and he preferred that it remain that way.

…

Occasional catcalls or shouts of encouragement trailed behind them as Tidus and his partner made their sixth lap around the track. Two bodies, bare-chested and sculptural, moved in tandem. As was expected of him, the athlete rolled his eyes without venom, casting a glance at Cloud.

Cloud Strife. Blond and blue eyed, perhaps a bit slimmer but of a similar build. Strangers thought they were brothers in pictures. In person, however, it was all too clear that Cloud was his doppelganger, his reflection and opposite. For all his strength, Cloud seemed capable of breaking at any moment, fair and ethereal where Tidus was perpetually sunburned and all too human. Quiet and reserved, sometimes to the point of rudeness, though his true smiles were gems when you could coax them out. Damaged beyond a doubt, but possessing such rigid self control that he would never falter, never admit weakness or ask for help.

When they had been roomed together freshman year, Tidus had seen himself in the withdrawn young man. He understood all too well the effort of stepping into not only a mask every morning but a full suit of armor. He was better at it than Cloud, granted, with so many of his cracks and scars showing, but perhaps it was for the best. If he could get Cloud to let down his walls, maybe he could do the same, sit comfortably in his own skin with another person without exhausting himself projecting some fantasy of who they wanted to believe he was. If anyone could accept him for his true and broken self, then Cloud could.

Except it became clear all too quickly that he _couldn't_. That from the beginning he saw a light in Tidus, craved the idea of purity and strength and confidence. Some very small part of Tidus felt betrayed in that realization, but he smothered it with the ease of practice. If that was what Cloud needed him to be, then that was what he would become. In three years, his role had not wavered.

The fairer male's breath was growing more ragged, and Tidus slowed belatedly with an abashed look as if to say 'Oh, there I go being an oblivious dunce again.' Cloud stared daggers at him, and he shrugged in tandem with a bright, innocent grin. The track was an even mile, a scenic loop through the park, but while the eight minute miles they had been pulling off simply fell under the category of solid training for Tidus, they qualified as petty torture for most mortals. (Such creatures also tended to dislike exertion in the scorching heat of late August, but to the mind of Tidus Lys they were strange beings indeed.)

"Sorry, we can run tens for a bit to get our breath back," he offered. Cloud nodded, assenting, and Tidus realized that he had missed his cue.

"This does, however, further uphold my theory that fencing is not a sport. Athletic activity. Whatever," he drawled with mocking nonchalance.

Cloud snarled at him, but his expression lightened, and Tidus knew that he had fulfilled his function. That he had even had to consider his response was disturbing, however. He was an actor and a liar, granted, but it was rare that he had to think about his role once inside it.

"Just because _some_ of us don't need tacky uniforms and a massive crowd of drunks bellowing at us –" he began, eyes flashing. For Cloud, the rant was damn near impassioned, and Tidus let it roll over him in waves. Other than the steady number of miniscule winged insects stuck to his sweat slick skin (or trying to fly up his nose) at any given moment, and the gnawing awareness that a large and evil blister was growing on the underside of one toe, there was nothing else to distract him, only the steady rhythm of his legs as he focused on turning over his strides, rolling his feet for momentum and to lessen shock, feeling truly strong for once as he felt muscles and tendons shifting and stretching, blood pumping steadily.

Running was special, he had long since decided. Physical prowess was the most minor factor. Eventually, you could reach the limits of your body, but before that it was purely mental. Restraint, and iron self control. It was so much in the head that there was not room for thought, merely the direction of the body.

_Not thinking _was the closest to bliss Tidus ever came. Even in sleep his thoughts manifested in dreams, and in waking they followed him, racing beyond his reach to make him see and understand things he would have quite willingly ignored.

Though he had often reflected on the benefit a psychiatrist might do him, the only contact he had ever made with the species had been nearly a decade before, when Jecht _really_ left and the school counselor had leaned on his mother until she agreed to make the necessary arrangements.

That meeting had told him any number of things. At twelve years of age, fidgeting in a threadbare armchair with the awareness that he was the sole object of attention in a room with three adults, he learned that he needed to hide himself. That people could peel back your skin and pick you apart if you let them, that he wore his soul as clearly as he face or body language and it should be kept somewhere safe.

It told him that he was shy and self-conscious, eager to please and be accepted, physically immature for his age but mentally ahead. "It", the thick envelope snatched from the mail before his mother arrived home from work, told him that his IQ was 142 overall, that there was a notable gap between his verbal and quantitative intelligences, that he was depressed and suffering from all the expected issues of abandonment.

Tidus burned it in the alley behind their garage, kicked the ashes, and began to hide himself.

…

Jecht was a gruff man, simple and easy to relate to. People loved him for it.

Tidus was as polite and somber as any child raised in a family with no other children, not even cousins, and spoke like an adult due to the language absorbed from the stacks of books he escaped to. Once he started paying attention, he learned that composure was perceived as arrogance and unsocial leanings, that advanced vocabulary was seen as bragging.

By the time he started college, Tidus almost believed himself to be a bumbling idiot as much as anyone else did. Harmless, a little dim (so you can feel smarter standing next to him), good-natured, sure to ask the stupid questions and keep everyone in stitches. He dropped consonants and littered his speech with the appropriate slang. Sometimes he wondered if he had forcibly made himself stupider.

People loved him for it.

…

Xigbar Carascon was normally a mellow individual. Hovering months away from thirty-five, he had wreaked the necessary havoc as a young man; crashed cars, incinerated chem labs, fallen into brawls with professors, gotten stoned out of his mind, and screwed almost everyone he knew. (More on this note and how darling little Paine was conceived later).

Again, in essence, Xigbar liked to think that he had reached the point in his life where he could afford to chill. Life was good, after all (mostly). Other than Lulu bitching him out for child support (which he would never forget, but the implication that he would rankled), in fact, it was damn good. Zexion and Demyx were finally banging, so no more exhausting sexual tension there. He was finally getting his degree, also good, though only because Saix was right there with him – two old fucks in a room full of teenagers was better than one – and Marluxia had finally moved in with Larxene so he could stop choking on pollen every time he walked into the apartment.

But some people… some people, he decided, jaw clenching in irritation, we just too much.

Lys, for example. Star of the university's blitzball team, the conquering hero who had taken them to national finals for two years now and promised to repeat the victory. The one who could be seen practicing before even the coaches were awake at the butt-crack of dawn, then showing up to classes glowing and energetic, charming even the bitchiest professors (perhaps too much charming when it came to Psycho Xemnas – who doted like a sociopathic puppy on Lys and Saix but snarled if Xigbar so much as blinked) hair perfect and skin a shade of tan which would have seemed fake if not for the ever-present evidence of sunburn over the bridge of his nose and shoulders.

Lys, occasionally referred to with venom as Goddamn Perfect Glowy Boy. Celebrity father, star athlete, popular as all hell, good looking, and apparently a Good Person. Was running. Coming out of the bank across the street from Sunset Park, he had halted, checkbook in hand, so suddenly that he banged one shin against a cruelly placed fire hydrant and leaned, swearing, against his battered truck to stare.

Goddamn Perfect Glowy Boy was _running_. Hard. And had been for some time, judging by the sheen of sweat. Xigbar, who tended to prefer actually wearing clothing (because hello, _scars_) sneered mockingly at all the flashing skin. '_Okay, you're a superstar, you're ripped, we get it. Real men wear shirts._' Running was good. Healthy. Self-improvement. When you were goddamn perfect and glowy already, however, there was no room for self-improvement, and so it became showing off.

It was… infuriating. The blitzballer turned to speak to his companion, face alight and eyes practically beaming blue out of his skull. As relaxed as if he were merely strolling. His paler companion met the apparent challenge with defiance, and took off sprinting. Lys followed, obscenely toned legs flashing and shifting as they rounded the far corner of the loop and disappeared from sight.

Muttering to himself, Xigbar clambered into his weathered pick-up, knocked back the now not-so-icy bottle of Orange Crush he had promised himself as a reward for responsible banking, and drove away.

He did not think of the incident for months. It merely became an awareness at the back of his mind, and if the blitzballer was mentioned in passing, or flashed across his television screen, he perceived the young man with an edge of cynicism, recalling not so much the moment at the park as his steady, subconscious awareness of the other's arrogance.

Zexion in particular seemed intrigued by his focused dislike, but any stirrings of conversation around the athlete prompted a fidgeted Demyx to intervene in the belief that his boyfriend was a few inches of introspection away from deciding he had a fetish for blonds, despite his repeated assurances that his only fetish was for Demyx.

And so time moved on.

…

Tidus eyed the bucket mournfully, with all the dramatic sighing expected of him. He had grabbed the corner seat by the window in his rushed just-in-time-for-the-bell entrances for so many months that it had become reflexive, routine.

The annex, however, was one of the oldest and most pitifully maintained structures on campus. The previous morning, the plaster of the ceiling had finally died a soggy death, and water steadily dripped into the bucket in his seat, mirroring the torrential autumn storm beyond the windows.

Usually he could get away with calling Professor Gainsborough "Aerith", but the stern arch of her brow and the stack of finals in her arms dried up any such attempt before it could reach his lips. Ducking his head meekly, he darted to the nearest empty seat, several rows back (other than the one next to Yuffie, but the last thing he needed was a hyperactive ninja girl groping him under the table in the middle of his Cellular Biology final.

The older man he had assumed to be a TA at the beginning of the semester muttered something under his breath but never met his eyes. It took all Tidus' considerable self control not to immediately mold himself, charm away whatever had caused the reaction. Now was not the time, and he needed all the focus for the thick sheaf of paper landing in front of him, print tiny and menacing.

People thought Aerith was _nice_. Aerith was the spawn of Satan and Mother Theresa. Which pretty much meant that she would kill you, bandage you up nice and tidy, and kill you all over again.

Beneath all his bumbling and self-effacing, however, a predatory grin bubbled up. Tidus _loved_ biology. The complexity of the systems, the structure, everything. Careful to furrow his brow in confusion, he dove in.

…

There were some things that Xigbar couldn't help but notice. Larxene in a bikini (Begone foul demons!) was such a tragic example. Tifa's breasts were another. Saix's tendency to sneak his steak off the grill at parties and dig into the bloody meat with fervor. Some things were simply obvious.

And as he steadily progressed through his dense final (Because some committee fucker with his own head up his ass had apparently decided that a comparative lit major needed to take science and… math.) he noticed several things. While the lithe young man radiating heat like a miniature sun beside him had started with the expected look of dull confusion, it had slipped away. Wide cerulean eyes gleamed with what he could have sworn was _lust_, that mobile mouth parted slightly.

Every few pages, Lys would stop. Glance up and around the room, not at other papers but the students themselves. And for several minutes after each such observation, he did nothing. That taut body practically hummed with the force of his self-restraint as he ducked his head and moved his hand to give the appearance of writing, face twisted in comically overstated perplexity.

Goddamn Perfect Glowy Boy was slowing himself down. Was he _trying_ to look stupid? Xigbar would have almost thought the strange behavior to be some immature mind game, a stunt to screw with the others, if not for the brief flash of panic every time he caught himself and glanced around, as if worried that his sharpness of mind had been revealed.

It was distracting, and despite having all but shoved his textbook into a blender and gulped it down in his studying, Xigbar almost missed the end of his essay.

It put him in a foul mood. He didn't like being confused.

Xigbar was out the back door the moment the tests were all collected, and was glad not to run into the blond freak for several days.

…

Tidus was happy for them. Truly, he was. Cloud really deserved a chance to be happy after that disaster with his fencing instructor in high school, and Reno, if something of a thug, was so many things that Tidus only pretended to be. It would be good for them both, he decided.

At the moment, however, he was regretting urging them to talk while he got their drinks. Yuna, Kairi, and Sora had given him such looks of pitying condescension that he should have heeded them, but he had become so accustomed to being treated like an idiot that he rarely noticed the specifics anymore.

Now some _very_ interesting noises were emitting from beneath the table, while all three looked on in rapt fascinating. At the moment, however, the blitzballer found he had no real desire to watch two friends go at it and listen to the three remaining girls (Sora had a Y chromosome, apparently, but until Tidus saw a certain portion of his anatomy he refused to believe it) chat about jeans and pop music and all the kinky things they got up to with _their_ boyfriends.

Dropping off their drinks, he trudged back to the bar, sipping his Cherry Coke idly and waving away the well-intentioned bartender every time "something stronger" was offered.

He had to be here, because otherwise he would be alone, with nothing to do but think.

…

It wasn't his fault.

Xigbar, trapped between equally drunken Larxene and Marluxia, had been conversing quite innocently with Zexion on the ability of the writer to manufacture incredible prose – did one need to be chronically depressed and fucked in the head like Sylvia Plath, or lead an extraordinary, dramatic life like Nabokov (they realized, in fact, that they were hard-pressed in their inebriated state to think of a memorable novelist who had not been tragic or adventurous in some way. Perhaps that was why they weren't memorable?)

Then Goddamn Perfect Glowy Boy slipped into his line of sight, and all that was right in the world suddenly became profoundly annoying.

Later, Xigbar would say that he didn't remember moving. This was the truth, actually. It was just that he left out the part where he also lacked memory of throwing his glass into the low light fixture, kicking Marluxia, and snarling about shiny things.

The muscular blond glanced up, betraying a flicker of weariness before he began knitting together a wall of pleasantries and simple-minded cheerfulness.

Xigbar was more than willing to cut him off before he had a chance to start pretending again.

"Why aren't you with your friends? No orgies tonight?" Damn, but he hadn't mean to sound so sharp, even if only to this brat.

The brat in question, much to his surprise, snorted in a manner that would have sounded almost cynical if not for its source. Even so, it was a narrow miss. "What they do is their own business, but it's- not for me. Catholic," he added with a loose gesture. "I'm starting to think I'm the only person on this campus who bothers to go to Mass. Well, y'know. It's a sin, and all that. At least it is if you're Catholic." The corners of his mouth turned up temptingly, but his eyes were mocking.

Xigbar blinked, and processed all the implications of the statement. "You're Catholic… and you're having a Coke? I call cherry-picking."

Now the smile was sharp, unlike any expression he had seen Lys wear before. "Slow down. A guy can only live up to so many stereotypes at a time. For the record, even though I'm a baller, I also know how to read and count to ten. Impressed yet?"

"Never realized it was an act," the older man murmured slowly. The speech was soft, but the reaction violent, the blond flinching. Callused, scarred fingers clenched spasmodically around his glass. When no response was forthcoming, he continued in his musings.

"You're smart. In cell bio, at least, you're damn good and you love the stuff, but you act like you're an idiot barely pulling through. You run like a marathoner because you really think you have to keep making yourself better. And you're queerer than a three dollar bill, of course."

Lys paled – a feat Xigbar would have thought impossible – but responded to only the last assertion, the usual brightness of his voice drained away.

"I'm not gay. I'm Catholic. Keep up."

"You spun me a story about the apparent magical properties of Catholicism in banishing homosexuality. Bullshit. Straight men? Say 'I'm straight'. Or they don't have to lean on dogma. I was raised in the Church – and I came out drinking _properly_ – but I still seem to end up screwing men as much as women. Maybe I can get in on that good ol' Catholic magic you're telling me about."

At some point he had moved, and it startled him to find himself leaning heavily on the bar, invading the younger man's space. He could smell the faint tang of musk and sweat, the clean sharpness of soap. Up close, the seemingly blue eyes reflected light like opals, but let nothing in.

"You lie with everything you are," he murmured, watching those vivid eyes widen. So close, he could see the skin peeling on Lys' sunburned nose, count the freckles over his cheekbones, see a hint of gleaming white teeth and a wet tongue beyond chapped lips ever so slightly parted. When Lys – Tidus, might as well call him Tidus when they were this close – spoke again, it was raw and agonizing.

"What would you do if you knew there was something wrong with you-" the words were slow and broken, but flat, as if the force of dragging them out drained him of the energy to inflect them. "If you knew that no one would want to be near you if they could see it? That everyone's going to leave eventually, but they'd never come close to you in the first place if they knew how _wrong_ you were?"

Xigbar looked at the young man who sounded like a boy and thought himself a monster. At the taut line of his throat and the misery warping his face and the self-loathing in his clenched hands.

Xigbar didn't mean to kiss him, but that's exactly what he did.

* * *

...

A/N: I may continue this story. Maybe not. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to share.

_Thanks_ to all readers and reviewers!

One Line / P.J. Harvey

(Do you remember the first kiss?  
Stars shooting across the sky  
To come to such a place as this  
You never left my mind

I'm watching from the wall  
As in the streets we fight  
This world all gone to war  
All I need is you tonight

And I draw a line  
To your heart today  
'To your heart from mine  
A line to keep us safe'

All through the rising sun  
All through the circling years  
You were the only one  
Who could have brought me here

And I draw a line  
To your heart today  
'To your heart from mine  
A line to keep us safe')


End file.
